Don’t Settle for Substandard

Without question the Christian life is the greatest life there is. I’ve become more convinced of this as time passes by, especially when I look at some of my old high school friends and the course their lives have taken.

More than ever, I’m so thankful that at the age of 17 I chose to follow Jesus Christ.

But the Christian life is more than just praying a prayer or walking down an aisle and getting so-called fire insurance. God intended the Christian life to be dynamic, to be exciting, and to have a radical effect on our outlook and the way that we live.

That’s because Jesus Christ not only wants to be our Savior, but He also wants to be our Lord. He not only wants to be our friend, but He also wants to be our God.

I’m afraid, however, that many of us live a substandard Christian experience. In many ways, that’s an oxymoron because if it’s Christian, it shouldn’t be substandard. Yet, in a sense, many Christians fail to receive all that God has for them.

So why is it that in the first century, a handful of ordinary people turned their world, as they knew it, upside down? They managed to accomplish it without social media, the Internet, television, or radio.

How were these Christians able to do it?

I think we could sum up their success in one word: discipleship. They were true disciples of Jesus Christ, not fair-weather followers. They didn’t live an anemic, watered-down, ineffective version of the Christian life.

Instead, they lived the Christian life as it was meant to be lived, as Christ Himself offered it, and as the early disciples apprehended it. And if we’re going to impact our culture today, then we, too, must be true disciples of Jesus Christ.